Hanna death tolls rise as Ike threatens Bahamas

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An aerial view shows flooding caused by Tropical Storm Hanna in Gonaives, Haiti September 3, 2008. Heavy rains flooded parts of Haiti with head-high water on Tuesday and sent walls of mud down the hillsides, killing at least 25 people as Tropical Storm Hanna swirled over the Bahamas and took aim at the southeastern United States. Picture taken September 3, 2008.
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An aerial view of people leaving town after floods is seen in Gonaives September 3, 2008.
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An aerial view shows flooding caused by Tropical Storm Hanna in Gonaives, Haiti September 3, 2008. Heavy rains flooded parts of Haiti with head-high water on Tuesday and sent walls of mud down the hillsides, killing at least 25 people as Tropical Storm Hanna swirled over the Bahamas and took aim at the southeastern United States. Picture taken September 3, 2008.
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People leave town after Tropical Storm Hanna caused floods in Gonaives September 3, 2008.
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This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite taken on September 2, 2008, shows Ike getting organized in the central Atlantic Ocean. Tropical Storm Ike strengthened into a hurricane in the open Atlantic Ocean on September 3, 2008 with winds of 80 miles per hour (130 km/hour) winds, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
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GONAIVES, Haiti Powerful Hurricane Ike weakened slightly as it charged across the Atlantic toward the Bahamas and the United States on Thursday while Tropical Storm Hanna's death toll from floods in Haiti grew to 90.

Campgrounds were closed and some evacuations began on North Carolina's Outer Banks as Hanna churned east of the far-flung Bahamian chain of 700 islands on a path toward the southeastern U.S. states on Saturday.

Ike posed no immediate threat to land and it was too early to say if it would threaten Caribbean islands, the U.S. East Coast or the U.S. oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Tropical Storm Josephine churned in Ike's wake across the Atlantic.

The trio of Atlantic storms followed Hurricane Gustav's rampage through the Caribbean to the Louisiana coast, where it slammed ashore on Monday west of New Orleans, largely sparing the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

The flurry was a clear signal that this six-month hurricane season was on track to be a ferociously busy one, though not like record-busting 2005 when 28 tropical storms, including Katrina, rolled across the Atlantic and Caribbean.

HAITI TOLL RISES

In the Haitian port city of Gonaives, residents roamed the streets hunting for food as floodwaters that had trapped hundreds on rooftops receded, leaving behind deep piles of mud and the carcasses of goats, pigs and dogs.

Crowds of people knocked on the windows of passing cars, pleading for food and water.

"I have nothing to eat," resident Jean Pierre Moreau said. "No food, no water, and no one seems to be able to help."

At least 90 people died in floods and mudslides triggered by Hanna, 37 in the Gonaives area alone, Haiti's civil protection office said.

Hanna was the third deadly storm to strike Haiti in weeks. Gustav previously killed at least 75 people and Tropical Storm Fay killed more than 50.

President Rene Preval called the situation "catastrophic," comparing it to floods from Tropical Storm Jeanne in September 2004 that killed more than 3,000 people around Gonaives.

Hanna weakened slightly on Thursday. Its top sustained winds were at 65 mph (105 kph) and the U.S. National Hurricane Centre expected it to remain below the hurricane threshold of 74 mph (120 kph) through landfall around the South Carolina-North Carolina border early Saturday.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency and his South Carolina counterpart, Mark Sanford, advised people in two northern coastal counties to evacuate. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine also declared a state of emergency.

On North Carolina's fragile Outer Banks, beachgoers took advantage of sunny skies and light winds, but the National Park Service closed campgrounds on Ocracoke and Hatteras islands and a mandatory evacuation of isolated Cape Lookout National Seashore was under way.

'DAMP SQUIB'

Hanna's threat to the Bahamas ebbed as the storm churned to the east.

"It's been a bit of a damp squib (dud)," said Kathleen Ralph, a resident of Marsh Harbour, a tourist destination virtually shut down by the storm. "We're now more concerned about Hurricane Ike, which looks stronger."

In Nassau, the Bahamian capital, some shops along Bay Street, the main tourist area, boarded up, and jewellery and liquor stores pulled down metal shutters, less out of concern about Hanna than powerful Ike, which was expected to be in the northern Bahamas by Tuesday as a "major" Category 3 hurricane.

Ike's top sustained winds weakened to 135 mph (217 kph) by 5 p.m. EDT (10 p.m. British time) as it moved across the Atlantic 505 miles (810 km) north-northeast of the Leeward Islands, but it remained an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity.

The Miami-based hurricane centre said it was too early to say where Ike might go. But the storm has drawn the attention of energy companies running the 4,000 offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico that provide the United States with a quarter of its crude oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.

Although Florida's Kennedy Space Centre appeared to be in Ike's long-range target, NASA hauled the space shuttle Atlantis to its seaside launch pad on Thursday for its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope next month.

Josephine weakened to a 45-mph (72-kph) storm as it moved 590 miles (950 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands.

(Additional reporting by John Marquis in Nassau; Writing by Jim Loney; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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